Conclusion
To date, there is no generally accepted definition for employee engagement. However, there is growing consensus among the authors that the construct is distinguishable from related concepts in management such as employee commitment, organizational citizenship behaviour and job satisfaction in such a manner that employee engagement clearly reflects the two-way exchange of effort between employees and employers, and it has stretched meaning beyond the aforementioned constructs.
Research on engagement is still on its infancy, attempting to come up with more clear-cut and acceptable definition.
Most studies demonstrate that feeling valued by management, two-way communication between management and employees, management’s interest in employees’ well-being and giving more opportunities for employees to grow are the top drivers of employee engagement. Nevertheless, as studies indicate, employees do not give much importance to pay and benefits. This might be the case because almost all the surveys were made in companies working in economically-well-to-do countries. The priorities of drivers might have varied if similar surveys were undergone in other third world countries, like African countries. Therefore, there is a need for more global surveys including more number of countries.
The literatures indicate that employee engagement is closely linked with organizational performance outcomes. Companies with engaged employees have higher employee retention as a result of reduced turnover and reduced intention to leave the company, productivity, profitability, growth and customer satisfaction. On the other hand, companies with disengaged employees suffer from waste of effort and bleed talent, earn less commitment from the employees, face increased absenteeism and have less customer orientation, less productivity, and reduced operating margins and net profit margins. Most researches emphasize merely the importance and positive impacts of employee engagement on the business outcomes, failing to provide the cost-benefit analysis for engagement decisions. As any other management decisions, engagement decision should be evaluated in terms of both its benefits and its associated costs, without giving greater emphasis to neither of the two, not to bias the decision makers. Thus there is a need to study the cost aspect of engagement decisions. The remarkable fact is, the findings of today’s researches, can be used as corner stone for the building of complete essence to the construct. Furthermore, much of the works related to “employee engagement” construct is attributed to survey houses and consultancies. Therefore, there is a need for academia to investigate this new construct and come up with a clear definition and dimensions that will be used for measuring employee engagement justifying the importance of engagement concept. Otherwise, it will pass away shortly as many other human resource fads did.
Findings of various researches suggest their own strategies in order to keep employees engaged. Here in this article ten points or strategies called ‘the ten tablets” were suggested to keep employees engaged. For managers, work of employee engagement starts at day one through effective recruitment and orientation program, the work of employee engagement begins from the top as it is unthinkable to have engaged people in the organizations where there are no engaged leadership. Managers should enhance two-way communication, ensure that employees have all the resources they need to do their job, give appropriate training to increase their knowledge and skill, establish reward mechanisms in which good job is rewarded through various financial and non-financial incentives, build a distinctive corporate culture that encourages hard work and keeps success stories alive, develop a strong performance management system which holds managers and employees accountable for the behaviour they bring to the workplace, place focus on top-performing employees to reduce their turnover and maintain or increase business performance.